Plenary Sessions

OPENING PLENARY

Monday — 1:15 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Reinventing the Research University to Serve a Changing World

James J. Duderstadt President Emeritus University Professor of Science and Technology University of Michigan

The seemingly incompatible imperatives of a changing world–massification (extending college degree attainment), league table rankings (achieving world-class research capacity and quality), exponentiating technologies (cyberinfrastructure, open learning resources, social networking), and shifting public priorities (viewing education as less a public good than a private benefit)–are all posing formidable challenges to higher education. While these are driving many institutional changes at the margin (increasing enrollments, expanding use of part-time faculty, rising tuition levels), recent studies at the international, national, regional, and institutional level suggest that not only is a more fundamental restructuring of higher education necessary, but new paradigms of learning, scholarship, and engagement may be required that will radically change the public purpose, mission, and character of the research university itself.

About the speaker:James J. Duderstadt is President Emeritus and University Professor of Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan. A graduate of Yale University and the California Institute of Technology, Dr. Duderstadt’s teaching, research, and service activities include nuclear science and engineering, applied physics, computer simulation, science policy, and higher education. He has served on or chaired numerous boards and study commissions including the National Science Board, the Executive Board of the National Academies and its Policy and Global Affairs Division, the Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee of the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Commission on the Future of Higher Education, and the Advisory Committee on Cyberinsfrastructure of the National Science Foundation. He has received numerous awards and honorary degrees including the National Medal of Technology for exemplary service to the nation. At the University of Michigan he currently chairs the program in Science, Technology, and Public Policy in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and directs the Millennium Project, a research center exploring the impact of over-the-horizon technologies on society.

CLOSING PLENARY

Tuesday — 2:15 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Key Trends in Teaching & Learning: Aligning What We Know About Learning to Today’s Learners

We’re beginning to understand more and more about how we learn. Data from neuroscience, cognition and memory research is telling us about how we engage with each other, filter and encode the deluge of data continually washing past us, and recreate the relationships among data to act on our world. Technologies are our ways of extending our senses and augmenting our bodies. They enable us individually as well as situate us socially. Our opportunity to engage in learning individually, in groups, or in massive collectives is transforming the landscape of higher education. For many institutions today’s trends are simply things worth noting, the impact of which are still distant or unrecognizable. For others the trends emerging have the potential to shake the foundations on which they rest. What are the most significant trends in teaching, learning, and technologies that surround us today? It is hubris to suggest a road map. Perhaps instead we should look at the topology of our current landscape, with a slightly international perspective. Which among the experiments currently underway are important? Why? What do they represent? While some describe our current learning environment as ‘academically adrift’, tens of thousands are choosing to loosely aggregate in massive collective learning ventures. Technology has always been touted as a potentially disruptive innovation, but its impact on higher education has been measured. Hang onto your hats. Things are just getting interesting.

About the speaker:Phillip Long is Professor of Innovation and Educational Technology in the School of Information Technology & Electrical Engineering and the School of Psychology, founding director of the Centre for Educational Innovation and Technology (CEIT) at the University of Queensland (UQ), dedicated to research on learning environments that have the potential to innovate teaching, learning and creativity. The Centre fosters a community of scholarship among technology innovators, and researchers within UQ, across Australasia, and around the world. Professor Long’s current research interests focus on emerging technologies, the cognitive interactions with them, and the spaces, physical and virtual wherein they occur. His professional activities include serving on the boards of the New Media Consortium (NMC), NMC Project Horizon, Pearson Australia Advisory Board, Association for Authentic, Experiential & Evidence-based Learning (AAEEBL), the Global Online Laboratory Consortium (GOLC), and he has served as chair or co-chair of various conferences and meetings, including the first Learning Analytics & Knowledge conference. He also holds a Visiting Researcher appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.